What is carnauba wax anyway?
We as a carnauba wax supplier are constantly confronted with the following questions:
Carnauba wax what is it?
What is Carnauba Wax at all?
What is Karnauba Wax?
These are always the same questions, but formulated slightly differently. Nevertheless we would like to try to give an answer to them here.
Carnauba wax is a natural wax. It is extracted from the leaves of the carnauba palm (Copernicia prunifera). The wax, which comes only from Brazil, is one of the hardest natural waxes on earth and is used for the production of food coatings, cosmetics and car care products. It can also be used in emulsions, technical coatings and laquers.
Carnauba should not be confused with palm waxes that are manufactured from palm oil of oil palms. Those products are waxes called Stearic Acid or Palmitic acid, are white in color and lower melting.
Particularly noteworthy among Carnauba are the different types, which differ greatly in colour.
Types which are available in flakes or powder form:
These waxes impress with a very high hardness and a high melting point of over 80 to 87 °C. Furthermore, the wax is known to give surfaces more gloss.
During the melting process the hard wax develops a characteristic hay-like scent. Compared to the well-known beeswax, carnauba has a much higher melting point and is much harder.
Nowadays, carnauba wax is mainly used in cosmetic products, in care products, in natural cosmetics, mascara, on food as a release agent or as an additive for polishes and in paints because of its gloss and high strength. Carnauba wax therefore still has its place today despite many synthetically produced hard waxes. The wax is used and sold as powder or in flakes.
The trade with carnauba wax is an issue that is not always easy, as the wax comes exclusively from South America and has to be imported from there. We import regularly full containers from there. The fluctuating price of the wax is due to the annual harvesting season, which, depending on weather conditions, can shift or even stop altogether. This is especially problematic if it rains during the harvest period, as this can cause a large part of the harvest to fail. This leads to massive price increases. The last massive increase was noted in the year of 2018. If you are a regular buyer of Carnauba we would be glad to send you a price chart spanning over many years to see the fluctuation.
Further information about carnauba wax can be found here:
